Tuesday, April 9, 2013

If Dead Men Don't Rise

Almost
2,000 years ago, a Christian named Paul wrote a letter to a group of
people in Corinth, a city in Greece. People in that city had at one time
been enthusiastic about the Christian faith, but had then begun to have
some second thoughts. They had written a letter to Paul to ask
something like, "You told us that this man Jesus died and then came back
to life. We're pretty sure you don't actually expect us to believe that a man was dead and then alive again. That must have been some kind of a metaphor or a moral, right?"
But
Paul doesn't blink. He says, "Yes, that is exactly what I am saying."
In this letter to those Christians he affirms again and again that Jesus
really and actually died. Paul is concerned that these people in
Corinth are faltering in what they believe about the resurrection and he
addresses them in an interesting way. He says, "Okay, so you think that
dead people simply cannot come back to life. Well why don't we just
take a moment to consider that. Let's consider the implications if that
is true." He does this in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19.

I find it very
interesting that he approaches things in this way. You and I need to
think about the implications of what we believe, or what we don't
believe, or what we refuse to believe. Sometimes we have these little
dangling threads in what we believe and we just haven't considered them
properly. What Paul does here is say, "Let's think about what will
happen if we say that dead people don't ever come back to life. Let's
just ponder that for a few minutes." He begins to tug on that
loose thread.

We Worship A Dead Man

"If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised."
If there is no resurrection, then Jesus Christ has not risen from the
dead. We worship a dead man. Jesus went to the cross, he died, he was
buried, and his body decayed to dust just like everyone else's.
Christians are followers of a dead man.
The Christian faith is
unique in claiming that its great teacher is not only a man but also
God; it is unique in claiming that its great teacher not only died but
was resurrected. But if there is no resurrection, suddenly the Christian
faith is unique only in a few small points, but really, it is pretty
much the same as every other faith. We are people who put our hope in a
guru, a spiritual leader, who lived and then died. While he lived he
taught us some good lessons and helped us see how to live a good and
moral life. But then his time was over and he died and is gone. And now
we are left trying to be like him, trying to model ourselves after him
so we can be good like he was good.

We Preach an Empty Message

The
second consequence flows right out of the first. If there is no
resurrection, Christ has not been raised. And, says Paul, "If Christ has
not been raised, then our preaching is in vain." If there is
no resurrection, Paul has been preaching an empty message. His preaching
is useless and a waste of everybody's time. He isn't talking so much
about the form of preaching here -- standing in front of a church to explain and apply the Bible -- but the message.
If Christ has not been resurrected, then everything he has been
preaching to this church is a waste. If you deny the resurrection, you
have gutted the Christian faith and the whole Christian message
is destroyed.

We Hold An Empty Faith

There is a third consequence that builds on these other two. "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain."
If Christ has not risen from the dead, our preaching is in vain. And if
our preaching is in vain, anything you've learned from it and any way
you live differently because of it is a waste of time. This is a
necessary conclusion. You can't have it both ways.

Whatever you
have done with the message that has come by way of preaching, however
you have applied it to your life, is also just a complete waste. You
have built your faith upon nonsense, upon something that is impossible,
something that didn't actually happen. This is what the Apostle taught
these people he loved. “Go ahead and deny that Jesus rose from the dead,
but if you do that, you no longer have a faith worth holding to.”

We Misrepresent God

Here
is the fourth consequence of refusing to believe that dead men can
return to life. Verse 15: "We are even found to be misrepresenting God,
because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not
raise if it is true that the dead are not raised." If we have been
teaching that God resurrected Jesus from the dead, and if that did not
actually happen, we are misrepresenting God. We are false witnesses.

Paul
reminds these people of the message he proclaimed to them right from
the time he first met them. He had told them that a matter of first
importance, utmost importance, is that Jesus rose from the dead. If this
is not true, if God did not actually resurrect Jesus from the dead,
then we are telling lies about him. We are telling lies about the
Creator of the universe. If we do this, we are directly violating one of
the ten commandments which says, "You shall not bear false witness." We
are violating the warning of Proverbs 19:5, that "a false witness will
not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape."

We Are Lost In Sin

As
he explains the fifth consequences, Paul will repeat his main point and
then add to it. "For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has
been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile,
and you are still in your sins." If Christ has not been resurrected,
then you and I are still lost in sin.
I can think of two possible
reasons why Jesus might have died and stayed that way, why he could have
died on the cross but never come back to life.

Maybe Jesus was
not actually sinless. Maybe he faced the judgment of God as a sinful
man, and God judged him guilty of sin, and his death was that full and
final separation from God that he deserved. If this is true he was just
like you and me; he was a man who was stained by sin and God was right
and just to condemn him and to keep him dead. If he was a sinful person,
he would not have been able to pay for his own sin, not to mention for
the sin of any other person. Like you and me, he would have been a
finite person who had an infinite debt to pay.

There is a second
reason Jesus might have died and stayed dead. Maybe he actually was
without sin. Maybe he actually did suffer the wrath of God for the sins
of other people. But maybe God did not accept his work. Christ offered
himself for the sin of other people, but God did not accept that
offering. And God displayed that he had rejected what Christ offered by
keeping Jesus dead in the grave.
Here is what Paul is saying. If
either of these are true, if Jesus was actually sinful and stayed dead
or if God rejected his offering and Jesus stayed dead, you and I are
still dead in our sin. We still have no Savior who has conquered the
death we deserve to die. We are lost. We follow a faith that has no
power over sin and death.

We Have No Hope Beyond the Grave

There
is another tragic consequence if there is no resurrection. Verse 17
again. "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you
are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ
have perished." If there is no resurrection, then every person who has
died trusting in Christ for their salvation experienced a very different
reality. Instead of awaking in the presence of Jesus Christ's glory,
they just faded into the black and were gone. Or even worse, they
believed they were falling asleep to awake in the presence of Jesus but
actually they died and found themselves in the torment of hell.

Either
way, for all of Christian history God's people have had confidence that
for them death is like falling asleep and waking to a far better
reality. They have fallen asleep, confident that they will experience
the blessing of God. Confident that it is better to be with Christ. If
there is no resurrection they have been dead wrong. We have fooled
people into believing a lie and all of those people are our victims.

We Are Pitiful

Paul
gives one final consequence for denying that Jesus rose from the dead.
Verse 19, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all
people most to be pitied." He ends with a bang. If there is no
resurrection, then you and I are not hugely blessed by God, but we are
just plain pathetic. We are pitiful. People should pity us for believing
something so silly, so hopeless.

I love Paul’s strategy and I
love his honesty. And I love his conclusion: If Christ did not rise, we
have no business considering ourselves followers of Christ. If he did
not rise, the Christian faith is a complete waste.